Minnesota Vikings RB Adrian Petersons' Slavery Comment Major Societal Issue

In recent comments, Minnesota Vikings star running back Adrian Peterson claimed that the deal the NFL is trying to get its players to agree to in the ongoing collective bargaining saga is akin to “modern-day slavery.”

This seeming slip of the tongue by Peterson is much more than that. It points to a much larger problem that society at large, not just Peterson and other pro athletes, needs to address. 

Society as a whole is to blame for Peterson’s momentary lack of humility, perspective and reality. 

Counter to what youth coaches would like to believe, great athletes are and will always be born, not made. That means that these guys are exceptional and obviously different and gifted athletically from a very early age.

Because contemporary American society puts such a premium on talent, celebrity and athletic prowess, these young men, and to a lesser extent women, learn at an early age that they are special and that normal rules simply don’t apply to them. 

This, in a nutshell, is the crux of the problem with many athletes when it comes to their inability to relate to their less physically gifted human brethren.

I do not know Peterson personally, but from all accounts he sounds like a nice young man. That slip up in words, however, is indicative of a total lack of world perspective and appreciation for what he has been given. 

Far too often athletes believe that it is solely through their will and work ethic that they achieve their unique physical abilities. 

What they fail to realize, or at least never publicly admit, is that it is their god-given talents, not their workouts that put them in the position to get to the level of athletic excellence they ultimately achieve. 

Then we come to the financial end of things, the base of why Peterson’s comment was taken as so offensive (rightly so) by many working-class Americans. 

The dictionary definition for slavery when it relates to business is: work done in harsh conditions for low pay.

That definition very clearly does not define the work of even the lowest paid player in the NFL and certainly not Peterson. It does, however, accurately describe the plight of many Americans who work sometimes two or three jobs to make ends meat.

This total lack of perspective is a much bigger problem in sports than performance enhancing drugs, gun control, strip clubs or any of the other problems sports talk hosts and columnists like to harp on. 

This disconnect between athletes and the real world is driving a wedge between the athletes and the adoring patrons who pay their high salaries. 

If you look at the NBA for example, it has consistently been losing revenue and overall fan interest for years. This attrition is a direct result of the predominantly white middle- to upper-class fans who pay to go to games losing their ability to relate to a league whose players are perceived to be undereducated, unappreciative and unduly wealthy.  

According to this 2009 special report by Forbes, nearly half of the league (12 teams) had a negative operating income compared to 2008, while more than half the league (18 teams) experienced either a flattening of franchise value or a decrease.

According to the report, the Sacramento Kings and the Memphis Grizzles (both teams rumored for relocation or contraction in recent years) have experienced a matching 13 percent decline in team value between ’08 and ’09.

Yet despite all that, without having access to their payrolls from those years I can guarantee you no player on either of those teams made less than $427,000 in ‘08, or less than $442,000 in ‘09. I can also guarantee you that the vast majority of Americans could only dream of making the NBA minimum salary in those years, or any year before or since. 

All we ask of these athletes who live such a privileged life is to recognize, admit and acknowledge the gifts that the man upstairs bestowed upon them. Is that too much to ask? 

The answer…

Yes.

If we don’t start being grown-ups and stop salivating over these kids and coddling them, holding their hand through everything and breaking every rule for them simply because “they are special.” 

Until we as a society learn to control our saliva and stop drooling over these human lottery tickets, until we start teaching them to be humans first and athletes second, we cannot and should not expect Adrian Peterson, or any other prominent athlete to know how to control their tongue. 

After all, they are all so special.